While the common conception is that all of biology is chemistry and all of chemistry is physics, this is incorrect, because “below” physics and “above” mathematics sits the science of information. Consciousness and free will aren’t based on physics&colon; they are information phenomena. None of these things emerge from chemistry and physics&colon; they emerge from the even more fundamental information “layer”.

So as Hellerstein suggests, free will and consciousness could be the results of self-causation, the “strange loops” that cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter describes, which emerge directly from information. To reconcile free will with our scientific knowledge, we just need to ignore physics and go with information.Lincoln, New Zealand